CES 2024: Day 2 (what you see is not all there is)

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

**Note: just another apology that this week’s AI Collision is coming to you at 5pm UK time, which is 9am Las Vegas time – Substack has time travelled with me.**

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

Break on through to the other side
When is a TV a car?
BBC dachshunds

If that’s enough to get the AI ball rolling, read on…

AI Collision 💥 You’ll see more by seeing less

There’s going to be a lot of stuff to see and show. I’ll give you a more in-depth recap video soon. As luck would have it, I’ve actually caught a cold (no doubt from the flights over) so I’m struggling to put two words together at the moment.

But I did drug-up (legal ones that is) and headed out onto the conference floor regardless to make sure I maximise my time here and get around to everything over the coming days.

Today it was all about the big consumer tech giants – LG, Samsung, Hisense and TCL – and the wizardry of home tech they had on offer.

The thing that’s caught the media attention and the general attention of everyone is transparent LED TVs and screens. Admittedly they’re a little gimmicky, but when you see them in the flesh, you start to see that they add depth and immersion to what you see in front of you.

In my view, it’s a sign that what we see and how we see it is taking another big step forward towards a “mixed reality” where digital and virtual images form a part of your surroundings. That in the near future, it’ll be more of a case that you see less and less of the device that delivers what you see. In other words, the device disappears but the content is better and more engaging than ever before.

Hologram vision? Maybe not quite yet, but when you see these transparent screens, it does seem a lot more likely that we get pretty close to that, very soon. Here’s LG’s amazing take on it anyway.

Of course, Samsung had its displays in action too, a mix of next generation “micro LEDs” and then a set of transparent displays too (albeit the video doesn’t really capture the depth of image they were really putting on display).

But what all of these big tech companies were showing off – that includes LG, Samsung, TCL, Hisense, Panasonic and others – was that AI would be in everything.

AI in your telly, your fridge, washing machine, even in a little robotic ball called “Ballie” that follows you around the house (and which in my view no one is going to actually buy).

Lots of cool, fun and visually stunning tech. Big themes around AI, the metaverse and mixed reality all very front and centre. But overall the idea that our digital and physical worlds are getting ever more intwined is a clear and distinct long-term trend.

I’ve got a bit more to say on it all and will have loads more content to show you too. Make sure to keep an eye on our “Notes” section on our Substack page for more real-time updates, and for my full CES debrief next Tuesday.

AI gone wild 🤪

There’s something missing from this CES that probably says more than what is actually here.

In every CES I’ve been to previously there was a growing presence of car companies and cutting-edge tech for the automotive industry.

It meant that at one point there was an entire hall dedicated not just to cars and car tech, but also drones, VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) vehicles and even AI and autonomous tractors.

There is bits and bobs around and there’s still a number of big automotive companies here like BMW and Mercedes, but some notable absences too.

There’s no Ford, no Audi, Volkswagen has a tiny stand through a subsidiary, the Stellantis brands are missing, Honda’s presence is tuned down, Toyota is nowhere to be seen, the list goes on.

What is interesting though is that companies like Sony, LG and Panasonic are all displaying their vision of car technology, with prototype vehicles from their own organisations.

Here’s LG’s vision of what an LG car might look like:

Then Sony figured it’d throw its hat into the ring (again) complete with Spiderman graphics in the front bumper:

While I’ve not got around to everything else car related yet, here is what Honda (one of the actual car makers) has in store for its future of the “saloon”. By the way, the company says what you see is exactly what you can expect to go into production.

I get the feeling that car companies of today, the big OEMs, are shifting more and more towards being “tech” companies and that the big “tech” companies realise there might be an opportunity in the market for their own version of what a car could and should be.

Is an LG car, a Sony car or a Samsung car such a wild idea? Maybe now, but maybe not in five years’ time.

What almost all of these next-generation, high-tech cars also have inbuilt is AI. That means AI to help on the journey, connect to your house, your health… a not too dissimilar story from years gone by, but we’re not talking about the connectivity part anymore. We’re now talking about insights and assistance from AI.

Truth be told much like the visual and immersive world that’s shaping up around us, there’s one thing that drives all this: data.

Of course the “under the hood” hardware processes the data at lightspeed. Chips, CPUs, GPUs, semiconductors and power processors are just some of the unseen tech that makes these future vehicles tomorrow’s wild reality.

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

man in black suit jacket and black pants figurine

Boom 📈

Wearable Devices (NASDAQ:WLDS) up 19%
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) up 10%
AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) up 7%

Bust 📉

Appen Ltd (ASX:APX) down 13%
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) down 5%
Symbotic (NASDAQ:SYM) down 13%

From the hive mind 🧠

The benefits of AI and another huge tech trend, supercomputing, could actually lead to better tech. That’s tech making other tech better – a benefit of advanced AI. And it seems that it’s already doing a great job of that.
In a big step forward for AI and entertainment, a deal has been struck for AI to be used in video game acting. This is a watershed moment in the use of AI in content creation.
Nvidia can’t shut off China, it’s a huge market for the company. So rather than annoy the US, which is another huge market for Nvidia, it’s just going to make specific chips for China’s AI.